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Party Leaders Clash in Capitol Over Pace of Filling Judgeships

Democrats and Republicans in the Senate held competing news conferences today and produced conflicting statistics as each side battled to demonstrate that the other was behaving abominably in considering candidates for the federal bench.

Republicans, led by President Bush, wanted to mark today as the first anniversary of the announcement of his first 11 nominees to appeals courts, the level just below the Supreme Court.

Democrats who control the Senate and its Judiciary Committee, which sets the pace of considering nominations, have not held hearings on 8 of the 11, and Republicans complained that Mr. Bush's nominees were not being treated fairly.

Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican leader, stood at a news conference before a chart with photographs of the nominees, who were described as being ''mired in Senator Leahy's quicksand.''

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the target of Republican ire, presented charts and statistics to show he was moving more quickly and fairly on judicial nominations than did Republicans when President Bill Clinton occupied the White House.

Mr. Leahy, in a meeting with reporters, said there were several vacancies because Republicans had refused to confirm many of Mr. Clinton's choices. To allow Republicans to fill those spots quickly would reward them for their obstructionism, he said.

''Through a variety of good-faith steps that Senate Democrats have taken,'' Mr. Leahy said, ''the judicial nominations process today is markedly faster and fairer than it has been.''

But President Bush, who spoke at the White House as part of the Republicans' publicity campaign, said there was a vacancy crisis in the courts, where about 10 percent of the 862 federal judgeships remain unfilled.

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Democrats responded with a judiciary subcommittee hearing held by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. The hearing was entitled ''The Ghosts of Nominations Past'' and featured four witnesses who had been nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton but never been given hearings when Republicans controlled the Senate.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the committee, called the Schumer hearing a stunt. The Republicans displayed their own chart of nominees to the federal bench who they said were ghosts of the past because they had been treated unfairly for decades.

The competing statistics to show which side is more perfidious could baffle a mathematician. But the current political game is fairly straightforward. The Democrats, who hold a slim majority in the Senate, have tried to slow consideration of those appeals-court nominees whom they consider very conservative.

The aim of the Democrats is to persuade Mr. Bush to mix in some more moderate candidates with his conservative nominees.

''This administration is not about balance,'' Senator Schumer said, ''about keeping the courts within the ideological mainstream. They're going to send up wave after wave of conservative nominees.''

The Democrats were ''not going to be bullied into letting this administration stack the courts for decades to come,'' Mr. Schumer said.

The White House made it clear that it would not change its preference for ideologically conservative nominees and would instead seek to use the issue against the Democrats on the political battlefield.